George W. Bush is far from perfect. He refuses to admit mistakes. He resists constructive criticism. His humor can be petty or cutting. His administration is secretive and self-righteous -- traits that presumably start at the top.

But Bush, unlike Kerry, has the courage of his convictions. He can take a strong stand and not run away from it when the political winds shift. On the big issues, the crucial issues, he is a decisive man who means what he says -- and isn't afraid to say it even when his listeners disagree.

For a nation going to the polls in wartime, no issue matters more than character. Kerry has much to recommend him, and Bush's flaws are many. But Bush has the character and backbone of a leader. And Kerry doesn't.--Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe

We finally got all of our numerous clocks squared away here at the adobe and by my count we've got less than 22 hours until the polls open. Thank goodness. Let's freakin' do it already.

We had us a great weekend here in Nord End. Thanks to the occasion of Ebon's 21st birthday, we had all of the kids and all of their kids on hand, as well as a few other well wishers and whatnot.

The ribs are easing up at this point, and this inhaler do-jiggie has my lung pain-free for the first time since October 2nd. Again, thank goodness. And if feeling good isn't good enough, we had tons of food, munchies and trendy alcoholic beverages on hand...despite the "worst economy since (repeat a Dem talking point now)." Plus, the "Blue Wall," The New York Giants actually kicked somebodys ass up one side and down the other. BANG!

Over the weekend, I watched plenty of political pundits on the video advertising box and got little more than a chuckle out of anything they had to say about tomorrow's election. It was one spinmeister after another. The Dem boob says Osama's sudden video re-emergence will help Kerry's chances, while the GOP boob claims it will no doubt help Bush's chances. The fact is, nobody really has a clue. The latest polling data? Somebody will win on Tuesday, provided that the election results fall outside of the margin of prolonging things in the courts. We can only hope, right?

I did take issue with some of the spin I heard. Let me get this straight. The Dems always garner 90-plus% of the black vote during presidential elections. Yet, the latest polling data suggests Bush may capture nearly 20% of the black vote. It's time to scratch your head. If Bush has made major inroads into a previously untouchable bastion of Democratic support, why would Republicans be doing everything possible to suppress the black vote, as the Dems are saying? Does that make sense on any level? Sounds like complete hogwash to this bumbling psephologist.

Here's another weird one. I read the entire text of Osama's latest ramblings, and it sure sounds like he's a Kerry supporter to me. "Not so!" the Democratic operatives were quick to cry. Their mutually agreed upon consensus was that the new video was more a recruiting tool than anything else. Huh? Hold on a fargin' second, here. These are the same people that have been telling us for months on end that Bush's decision to roll into Iraq was a terrorist recruiter's ultimate wet dream. So which is it? Are the disaffected lunatics of the Third World waiting patiently in long lines to be "All that they can be," or are the al Queda recruiters seriously missing their quotas?

Then there's this. The same spinmeisters claim that Osama's election cameo will remind voters that Bush diverted his attention from the war on terror and allowed Osama to escape after we supposedly "out-sourced" his near capture at Tora Bora. Okay? The problem is, nobody knows with absolute certainty that Osama was actually at Tora Bora when we apparently knocked it down a few hundred feet above sea level. In the mind of a Democrat, we're not sure than he was ever there in the first place, but that's still proof that Bush allowed him to escape. Thin, girlie men. Very, very thin. But not for the vitriolic Bush-haters.

Out-sourcing? That's another problem. Let's see. According to the near blinded hateful, Bush was wrong to out-source Osama's capture attempt, but John Kerry is promising to out-source the entire war effort in Iraq??? That's what he's tellin' us. If he's elected, we'll send our troops to Disneyworld and the French, Germans, Russians and Nepalese Gurkhas, among countless others, will be more than willing to take it from there. Yeah! And Katie Couric can beat the snot out of Mike Tyson. If Bush out-sources, it's the wrong approach to the war on terror. But, if elected, that's exactly what John Kerry is promising to do. Is it me?

And if I may, the last time we heard from Osama, 19 ultra-horny Arabs smashed planes into our landscapers and such. Recently, he's been pathetically reduced to sending us a rather lengthy videotape from his newest hideout. Are we noticing any stark difference in approach, here? Hmmm?

And then there's the thorny issue of not finding any Weapons of Mass Destruction among Iraq's millions of square miles of desert sands. We all know the oft-repeated charge from the left-leaners: Bush lied. The proof is in the pudding. Well, sort of. Despite the fact that practically every elected leader in the world claimed those dangerous weapons were in fact there, Bush is labeled as a liar for believing what everyone else correctly thought. See aforementioned "girlie men" reference. Thin, very fargin' thin. The thing that always stuck in my ribs (Ouch!), is the fact that to make the claim that Bush lied to us is to also level the ridiculous charge that by lying, Bush knew with absolute certainty that no WMD were ever there in the first place. Did he "lie" to us?

Stay tuned on that nonsense. History will eventually prove him to be 100% correct when it is finally determined exactly where they were spirited off to on the eve of the election. That'll be a kicker of sorts if he's eventually defeated tommorrow. He'll be voted out of office despite being right. "Lie after lie after lie after lie" will be determined to have come from one Ted Kennedy. Doesn't matter though. Some of us are consumed with delivering Gore's revenge. And in the process, delivering to us a an enigma; a wordy, shifting mystery man of a president. Wish us luck.

Here's another bit of frightening illogic. Love him or hate him, you can't deny that Bill Clinton totally dropped the ball while the growing threat of terrorism continully presented itself to him. His approach to battling the goons was to take them to court, if and when they could be captured. And now a world famous landmark, as well as 3,000 innocent Americans, no longer exist.

So John Kerry has continually promised to fight a faster, smarter, more effective, more sensitive War on Nuisance, but the overriding question he has not directly answered is exactly how he's going to wage that new-and-improved war. Well, he did say that we need to pass a "global test" before we can act to defend ourselves. Presently, the make up of a possible Kerry administration is beginning to take shape as he is surrounding himself with numerous former Clinton advisors. So we're gonna give the people who completely underestimated the growing threat we faced a second go-round? Feeling confident, are we? Or stupid, perhaps?

It'll be Clinton Part II. The opinions of the corrupt and feckless U.N. and the Euro-pansies will be of the utmost importance while we grapple with what we face. Does anyone actually believe the Europeans will be concerned about our national security while they are currently planning our economic and military slippage in the world? Did ya'll happen to notice that the fledgling European Union ratified it's constitution late last week? Their ultimate goal is to dominate us economically, so why would they be interested in backing anything that strenthens our long-term position? Who cares? We need to deliver Gore's payback, right?

If you've done any research at all on John Kerry during this election run-up, you'd have to realize that he's completely casualty-averse. Ahem, much like Bill Clinton was. Oh, sure, we'll bomb Bosnia, but the pilots are not allowed to fly under the ozone layer. We'll send Rangers and Delta Force operatives into Mogadishu, but without the armor they requested. They'll be allright, right? Besides, if we provided our troops with the armor they had requested, we might have come off as being "meanies" in the European press and the New York Times, and we just couldn't have that. We could wage war effectively and decisively, but what would the U.N. say? Depending on how things go tommorrow, we might be revisiting our "paper tiger" approach to defending ourselves and our national interests. Scary.

Also, I laugh out loud at Dems that continue to spew baseless drivel such as the "war for oil," while the growing "food for oil" scandal gets nary a mention. Bush is somehow labeled as being corrupt, but the obvious corruption of our "allies" that Kerry promises to beg forgiveness from doesn't even matter. We just gotta make things right again before poor, bitter Al Gore puts a gun in his mouth. Further proof that 48% of the electorate is harebrained at best.

That reckless cowboy himself, George W. Bush, needs to be strung up from the highest rope by the Marshall, but...John Wayne Kerry is precisely what we need right now. You figure it out.

I'd hate to cause anyone to gag, but I like Dubya. I caught his appearance with Arnold the other night and the guy made me laugh numerous times, while busting his own balls. What'd he say? Something to the effect of: "Arnold and I have a lot in common. We both married well. We both mangle the English language. And we both have huge biceps. (Roar from the crowd!) Well, two out of three ain't bad," he delivered with his near trademark smirk and wearing no tie with his sleeves rolled up. I'm confident that if he loses tomorrow, he'd be perfectly content with going back to Crawford, living a mostly quiet life, and being content with the knowledge that he did everything he could possibly do to protect us from further terror attacks.

And if he wins...we'll be safer in the long run than if Kerry had won. I firmly believe that.

Admit it, his wife, Laura, is one extremely classy First Lady. She is exactly what Hillary and Teresa are not. Namely, shrill bitches. Whenever I hear his clueless opponents comparing Bush to Hitler and whatnot, I can't help but to wonder how such a great woman could be married to a budding anti-Christ. Whatever. Nobody said his opponents and their hapless myrmidons were smart. Or even semi-truthful for that matter.

I like Dubya. And I like his wife. FOUR MORE YEARS!!!

Feel free to gag.

With the polls being as close as they are, and the Dems registering dead folks, illegal aliens and Martians all across these "most barren plains in 90 years," there is a distinct possibility that Dubya might just get bounced out of office during the next 48 hours. Unlike the majority of the Democratic faithful, that will in no way cause me to dedicate the next four years of my life to gaining a healthy measure of revenge at all costs. I'm not the type of person that mindlessly accepts the latest wrongful accusations from some bloated drunkard in Massachusetts and then runs amok with them. In other words, I'm not a Democrat with a 2004 factually-challenged mindset. And they call us Nazis?!? I seriously doubt that I could sink so terribly low, but you never know.

If Kerry wins, I'm not gonna lose my cool and completely freak out as his luke warm supporters seem to have done since the election fiasco of 2000. Nope. Despite my obvious loathing of formal education, I'm not as mindless and easily led as some folks appear to be, but that's neither here nor there. If Kerry becomes the man, the leader of the free world, I will watch his every move with extreme skepticism. And the very second he starts pandering to a hostile U.N., I will react immediately. I will shift assets and pull some serious bucks out of the stock market. When the next terror attack comes down, it's gonna dwarf what happened on 9/11. And Wall Street's value will sink faster than Ashlee Simpson's tumbling stock. Until we find out if John Kerry might actually grow a set of true blue, American-made cajones, I would suggest not taking on any new debt and considering what would happen to your net worth if the stock market were to crash after a debilitating terrorist attack. He keeps telling me he "has a plan," but he has yet to tell me what it might entail. Sorry, hateful Dems, but that should not instill much confidence in anyone while fanatic lunatics are scheming to introduce lots of us, or even all of us to deadly Sarin gas. Or worse.

It's obvious that we can't abandon the long-suffering Iraqi people at this point in time, and even John Kerry knows as much. They deserve much, much better than they've become accustomed to. No populace should have mass graves in it's neighborhood. But I wholeheartedly expect to see Kerry switch our war footing from that of an offensive posture to that of a defensive wait-and-see posture, ala attorney Bill Clinton. I really, really do. I'd love to be completely wrong, though. We shall see. Hang on to your Eagles cap, kiddies! It might be a wild ride. Whoopee!

Tomorrow is the big, big day and as per usual, I simply can't wait to vote. This 'peaceful transition of power' stuff is exhilerating for me, and should be the same for all of our citizens. Sadly, it usually isn't without some scumball, partisan know-nothing such as Michael Moore whipping the less enlightened among us into a one-time frenetic frenzy.

No biggie. We're better than him. I think. If we can be so bitterly divided and so totally disrespectful of the opposite voting camp and still elect a president with not so much as a punch being thrown; I say we still live in the best country that this world will ever have to offer to anyone.

Vote. And vote early. But unlike what Teresa Heinz Kerry has advised you Dems to do: Vote only once. Thanks to the failed McCain/Feingold bill, we've had enough cheating going on for well too long now.

Grab some copious amounts of beer, stay up way too late and watch the election results roll on in. You've got an unused sick day remaining, don't you? Come on. This is gonna be exciting. Democracy in action, baby.